Skye is fun, smart, caring and confident with an ability to get the upper hand by using her wit and charm. She is slightly obsessed with superhero culture and the shadow organizations that exists within it. She’s edgy and can out-talk anyone with her unflappable nature.

edit] Biography

See more details on Skye’s origins on the 0-8-4 page

Skye was born under mysterious circumstances, as the records of her birth and abandonment at the St. Agnes orphanage have been heavily redacted by S.H.I.E.L.D. at Level 8 clearance. She was dropped off at the orphanage in April, 1989 by Agent Linda Avery of S.H.I.E.L.D., when Skye was still an infant. She was assigned the name "Mary Sue Poots" at that point by the orphanage, which she disliked intensely.

Left to the dubious and tumultuous nature of the foster care system, Skye’s early life was characterized by constant upheaval and travel. She was assigned various foster families to no avail, and in the end was always sent back to St. Agnes. The only family she’d wanted to stay with was her third family, the Brodys, whom she was sent to when she was nine. They were distinguished from her other families due to their living in a house. Skye tried calling the foster mother "mom" once, and tried really hard to impress the couple so that she might stay permanently, but was sent back to St Agnes within a month. Thereafter, she stopped caring about subsequent foster families, once remarking retrospectively that "hoping for something and losing it hurts more than never hoping for anything". It was not until later that Skye discovered all her foster families were ordered to return her to the orphanage by an invisible protocol set up by Agent Avery in the U.S. foster system, to protect her from being discovered.

Skye is implied to not be a very good student as she dropped out in high school. It is unknown whether it was due to her bad grades or bad discipline, as she once described herself as very "screwed up". She left the foster system either at or before 18, and sometime between then and her 24th year, managed to stumble across the S.H.I.E.L.D. redacted document on herself, and has been trying desperately to find out more of her past since then.

It is also during this time that she met Miles Lydon, a notorious hacker, during a period of time when they were both "a little screwed up". They entered into an intimate relationship, and Miles taught Skye everything he knew about hacking, helping her in her personal mission, as one of the few people who knew about her search for her past. Skye likely also deleted all official records on her "Mary Poots" identity once she’d mastered this ability, as was implied in 1×01 Pilot, and adopted the name "Skye".

Miles and Skye both joined The Rising Tide after the Battle of New York thrust the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D. into the limelight. Uniting under the cause of freedom of information the Rising Tide propagates, they both became full-time hactivists for the huge international organization, cracking S.H.I.E.L.D.’s datastreams and leaking the information retrieved online, all the while keeping an eye out for personal information of her past on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s servers.

At some point, Skye parted ways with Miles, who stayed in Austin, Texas while Skye went to Los Angeles, California to work as a solo hactivist for The Rising Tide

edit] Season 1

Sometime in September 2013, Skye was intrigued when there was some internet chatter about a certain "Project Centipede" that was quickly silenced and completely removed from cyber space. Thinking this was the modus operandi of S.H.I.E.L.D., which covered up both Project Pegasus and the New Mexico incident from Thor with equal speed, she traced the project to its latest laboratory and set up surveillance around the location, hoping to catch S.H.I.E.L.D. in action. Amazingly, her diligence bore fruit when a man jumped out of the top floor laboratory (which exploded) one day, completely unscathed from the experience and even cracking the concrete pavement when he landed. Having recorded the entire incident on her smartphone, she edited the video with a taunting voiceover and left that file in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s servers with the Rising Tide logo, where it was extracted and given to Agents Maria Hill and Phil Coulson

Agent Coulson took this assignment as his first since his recovery from the Battle of New York, and set out to bring Skye in for interrogation on the new Unregistered Gifted. Skye was finally found out and kidnapped by Coulson’s new team, where she finally discovered that S.H.I.E.L.D. had absolutely no idea about Centipede. After a really unconventional, painless method of persuasion, she finally helped the team to track down Mike Peterson right before the Extremis in the Centipede serum caused him to explode.

She subsequently accepted an offer from Phil Coulson to join his fledgling team, which already comprised Agents Melinda May, Grant Ward, Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons, but was extremely surprised at the diversity of the team members, two of whom were as green as her in the field. Despite some initial conflict, the team bonded together during a hijacking crisis, allowing Skye to be quickly trusted by the rest of the team right at the moment The Rising Tide went dark, either due to S.H.I.E.L.D. managing to track down Skye via the Rising Tide’s cryptographic signature, or because Skye was now on the inside of S.H.I.E.L.D., causing the Rising Tide to bide its time so as not to jeopardize one of its operatives.

While Skye was initially hired on as a S.H.I.E.L.D. Consultant, she asked to be trained as a field agent for S.H.I.E.L.D.. Agent Grant Ward volunteered to act as her Supervising Officer, and she began to spend most of her time training with him, though she spent what little of her free time trying to look for avenues to hack into the more secure S.H.I.E.L.D. servers now within arm’s reach to search for her redacted document. Her guts, capabilities, and ability to improvise won the team over in successive weeks, while she in turn cared more and more deeply for her newfound "family", until she was forced to choose sides when her boyfriend, Miles Lydon, hacked S.H.I.E.L.D. Hong Kong’s datastream, leading to the kidnap of an Indexed Gifted. Trying to help both parties, she tipped off Miles who escaped pursuit from her new team, only for the couple to be found in a compromising position when Skye slept with Miles while trying to extract information on the hack from him. Subsequently, she was forced to divulge to team leader Phil Coulson on the truth behind her presence on The Bus, and was made to wear a monitoring bracelet that tracks her every electronic-related movement.

Despite this setback, Skye apologized to the rest of the team, but it took longer for her Supervising Officer Agent Ward to forgive her for her actions. Though she was comforted by Agent Coulson’s promise to look more deeply into the mystery of her past, she never gave up her own role in the search. However, when she was again forced to choose between her personal mission and the team’s safety during a narrow window of opportunity at S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Hub facility, she chose her team over her past, something that clearly signifies her shifting loyalties and love for her new teammates, though she can sometimes also develop tunnel-vision regarding this lifelong search of hers, as she’s been known to continue her search even during an active mission, something that exasperates Agent May, the only other person briefed by Coulson about Skye’s past. Confronted by the realities of their team’s responsibilities, she likely finally gave up active search on her parents, though she was heartbroken at the sacrifice.

When Coulson was kidnapped, she redirected all her focus to finding him even as she was disowned by the new, temporary leader, Level 8 Agent Victoria Hand, over the objections of her own Supervising Officer Grant Ward. He and the rest of the team helped her escape S.H.I.E.L.D. debriefing, and she utilized what she had despite her tracking bracelet to be the first to find a lead on Coulson’s whereabouts, leading to his rescue, which in turn earned her release from the tracking bracelet. She was however deeply disturbed by Coulson’s emotional turmoil subsequent to his capture, not knowing that Coulson was emotionally torn between revealing Skye’s own secret to her or to continue keeping it from her.

Coulson finally revealed the secret he learned from Agent Richard Lumley about Skye to her, over Agent May’s caution against it, but far from blaming S.H.I.E.L.D. for being the reason she had such a tumultuous childhood, Skye chose to look at the other side of things: that S.H.I.E.L.D. was the reason she survived, and that almost an entire team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents died to protect her. This gave her the motivation to be even more invested in and driven on the mission to join S.H.I.E.L.D.. While on an undercover mission gone wrong to take down Project Centipede, she made a tactical decision, in the absence of her three senior agents (Coulson, May, and Ward) to track down a lead to Project Centipede with only herself and teammate Leo Fitz active on the mission. Unfortunately, because her team was sold out to Project Centipede, she was discovered and shot twice in the stomach, with her shooter leaving her to die right before the rest of her team finally arrived and secured the compound. With little choice due to her heavy blood loss, she was placed in a hyperbaric chamber in the nick of time, while awaiting transport to the nearest S.H.I.E.L.D. medical facility in a near death state.

edit] Uprising Arc

Skye’s injuries were too extensive even for the trauma center in Zurich, leaving her teammates with no choice but to look for answers from Coulson’s death and recovery in the hopes of a miracle cure. While the team was out hunting, she coded several times and was manually resuscitated by Simmons, who stayed to watch over her and prepare her for quick transport. She was injected with the GH325 drug described in Coulson’s recovery report, and found in the Guest House facility, right as her condition took another turn for the worse. After a false alarm, the drug increased her cellular regeneration level, healing her injuries and brought her back from the brink of death.

After she’d woken up from her ordeal, she was strictly confined to the med pod installed in the Bus with Simmons acting as her medical officer (despite the biochemist’s lack of medical training), and she fretted, bored with the confinement, more determined than ever to train harder to become a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent so that she can get back into the game. Unknown to her, Simmons’ regular blood draw was meant as a research for the mysterious GH325 drug, the last known vial of which had been injected into her. She finally learned the truth of the source of the drug from Coulson, and she agreed to keep their mutual knowledge and investigation of the drug to themselves.

edit] Training and Abilities

Skye is a superb computer hacker, being trained by The Rising Tide cohort and ex-boyfriend Miles Lydon in "everything she knows" about hacking. Twice in the 1×01 Pilot she hacked past S.H.I.E.L.D.’s RSA implementation, drawing her to the attention of Phil Coulson and his team. She also has a natural empathic side, and her "people skills" gives her an advantage over her teammates during their missions of understanding and connecting with regular people more easily.

Currently she is training as a field agent for S.H.I.E.L.D. under the tutelage of supervising officer Agent Grant Ward. Her training regime includes relative strength training, weapons training, and field training.

edit] Relationships

• Miles Lydon

Miles is the only known link to Skye’s murky past; they met when they were both "a little screwed up". Miles, already a profligate hacker, taught Skye about hacking and inducted her into The Rising Tide, being one of the only people who knew about her search for her birth parents before the start of the series. While they shared an intimate relationship, they had already separated by the time Skye was picked up by Agent Coulson’s team in Los Angeles in the fall of 2013, and officially broke off the relationship after Skye discovered that Miles had sold out on his own principle on freedom of information.

• Phil Coulson

Originally considering him as nothing more than a faceless government agent, Skye was charmed and a little gleeful at Phil Coulson’s seemingly unconventional streak in handling things. As someone who is able to understand and empathize with the ordinary man on the street, Skye admires and respects Coulson not just because he had style, but also because he is the first person in a long while to value her as a person, even over the objections of his own teammates. She is eternally grateful for his trust in her even after her early divided loyalties, and even looks up to him as a father figure, but is sometimes frustrated at his blind faith in his organization. She has been shown to do everything within her power to rescue a kidnapped Coulson, worrying about him when he disappeared into his office for prolonged periods, and became devoted to him (above and beyond her own supervising officer, Grant Ward) to the point of also becoming personally invested in taking down Coulson’s kidnappers, the people behind Project Centipede

• Melinda May

Skye has something of a hero worship for her ever since Agent May first saved her at Union Station by "destroying a guy", and May has shown that she can be tender with the new girl even as she doesn’t fully trust her due to her past transgressions. However, May has never been chatty while on the Bus, which, when added to her seeming aggressive shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy with harmless civilians, led to a passive conflict between the two women. However, after Skye learns about what May was like before she became "the Cavalry", is now a bit more understanding of the other woman’s stoicism, even if the relationship between them isn’t always the best due to the dangerous secret May is keeping on Skye’s past, on Coulson’s behest. Despite all this, it can still be seen that Skye has a tremendous respect for and looks up to Agent May. Their relationship was mended somewhat in their common devotion to Coulson, as well as Skye’s newly-shown commitment to the team above her own personal mission.

• Grant Ward

The early relationship between the two can be characterized as a see-saw alternating between exasperation and admiration. Agent Ward is completely befuddled by Skye’s brash anarchist ways, while Skye dislikes his strict adherence to protocols and his representation of a governmental agency with no apparent public accountability. However, they both share a deep ability to care for the people on their team, and are gradually learning to find middle ground in their different methods used to approach the common goal of saving the people they care for. Despite early setbacks to their friendship, they have since bonded over the course of time, with Ward trusting Skye enough to (unsuccessfully) vouch for her in front of his superiors, and risked breaking protocol to help her escape S.H.I.E.L.D. debriefing.

• Leo Fitz

Skye considers Fitz as a good friend, charmed by his open, friendly manner and easy acceptance, though she is completely oblivious of his early attempts to flirt with her. Next to herself, Fitz can do a passably good job at hacking as well^[1], allowing them both to bond over their shared expertise. Fitz trusts Skye implicitly, and is willing to follow her orders even though, of the two, he is the trained S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.

• Jemma Simmons

Simmons is possibly Skye’s closest friend on The Bus, seen to often interact with her outside of her training hours. The two bonded very quickly due in part to their close age difference, and their mutual likeability. Simmons was the only one who showed some measure of understanding at Skye’s divided loyalties towards her former boyfriend, while Skye was in turn the most affected one, outside of Fitz, when Simmons contracted a deadly alien virus. While the two are opposites in their respect for authority, Simmons is growing to enjoy the thrill of rule-breaking under Skye’s influence.

edit] Memorable Quotes

Skye: We will rise against those who shield us from the truth and nothing can stop us in the…(van door slides open to reveal a stony Agent Ward and a smirking Agent Coulson) Hey! What up?

edit] Trivia

edit] Other Appearances

No appearances outside Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. at this stage.

edit] References

1. ↑1×03 The Asset